The cell shook so hard I was thrown against the wall. I snapped out of R.E.M. sleep and for a moment, imagined light in the room. I held my hand out in front of my face and couldn't see it. A second explosion confirmed it wasn't a dream.

I heard voices in the hall. Men yelling. Doors opening. Weapons fire. Screams. Were they executing prisoners?

I had nothing, naked and locked in a square box with a hole in the corner. I crouched low against the back wall with eyes on the door. I'd attack whoever opened it.

More weapons. Doors slammed. Muffled voices. They opened the cell next to mine and killed the madman within. No real loss there. A mercy killing at worst.

I heard the lock turn and saw a crack of light for the first time in two days. This was it. I pressed my feet into the corner of the wall. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.

I was blinded by white light when they threw open the door. I shielded my eyes waiting for them to adjust. They'd kill me for sure.

"Is your name Michael Diamond?"

I was starting to see blurred shapes in the doorway. "Nah, mine's Clarence."

They were coming into focus, blueish, definitely not Klandar. Had the ship been overrun?

A large Zorr with bright blue dreadlocks and a huge beard pointed a wicked black bladed sword at me. There were three more behind him with blasters. A young boy stepped into the room.

"Wait! He's the one who saved us. It was him, Bobby."

"He smells like shit."

"I owe him my life."

The large one shoved the kid out of the cell. "Can you walk?"

I'm sure I looked terrible. "I can run."

He stretched out his hand. "I'm Blue Beard. If you want off this dump follow me."

I followed. We ran down the hall. No guards anywhere, just me and the four Zorrs. One had clearly been a prisoner. Up two decks and more weapons fire ahead. We passed an observation window and outside was a souped-up freighter armed to the teeth. And there were the guards, their bodies anyway, attached to its hull.

"You're my kind of pirates."

Blue Beard smiled at me, gold teeth shining out from under his bright facial hair.

We rounded the next corner right into a firefight. The young boy stepped in front of me firing into a line of armored shock troopers. He took two rounds in the chest and dropped to the deck. I grabbed his blaster. The Klandar thought so little of my species they didn't even bother to shoot at me. Their hate for the Zorrs would be this squad's end. I flipped the boy's weapon to auto and mowed them all down.

Blue Beard put a hand on my shoulder and looked down at the kid on the floor. "His life debt is repaid. Now, I owe you one."

He had stood there with nothing but a sword, dodging disrupter blasts. He even batted one back. I understood why the others looked up to him. Hell, I'd even heard stories.

Everyone grabbed blaster pistols off the dead troopers and kept moving. We made it to the airlock without incident. Blue was about to close it when another explosion knocked us off our feet.

"Wait for me!"

A big dark green skinned Gastraddar in heavy battle armor was chugging down the hall toward us. He had a stack of bio-disruptor plasma rifles wrapped in a jacket under one arm and the bodies of two Klandar soldiers under the other. The flames behind him dimmed quickly and troops appeared through the smoke. They fired into the back of the hulk and at us in the airlock. The other Zorr pirate took one dead center between the eyeballs.

"Ditch those stiffs, we gotta go!" Blue yelled down the hall.

The Gastraddar turned around and heaved the bodies back at the oncoming Klandar. He kept huffing toward us. I guess he was already at his top running speed regardless of what he was carrying. Phaser blasts bounced off his armor shoving him along. He made it to the airlock.

"It's about time." Blue hit the door controls and we waited for the room to pressurize.

"What's with the Gorilla?"

Sweat dripped off the Gastraddar's black hair as he looked down at me. I didn't like Gastraddars much and I considered shooting him in the face. His helmet wouldn't protect him from my angle.

Blue Beard stepped between us. "Clarence, meet Øregaard. First Mate of the Dead Barge."

I decided not to shoot him. The outer door opened and we ran onto Blue Beard's ship. The hatch slammed down and the two space crafts separated. The Barge blasted the prison ship and high tailed it out of the system.

***

I enjoyed the longest most luxurious shower I'd had in five years. Women were no strangers to the Dead Barge and the variety of exotic smelling soaps was heavenly. I shampooed and conditioned myself three times. Smelled like a citrusy rose garden when I dried off.

I ripped the legs off a pair of flight suit pants so they would fit. Then I tore the arms off the jacket, put it on like a vest, wrapped a harness belt across my chest, and stuffed two phaser pistols in it. I hadn't worn clothing since the Klandar threw me in solitary. It felt good.

I was in the ship's mess devouring a second helping of mango salad made by a friendly Zorr by the name of Novation when Blue Beard walked in and took the seat across from me.

Blue Beard; scourge of the sector, pirate, renegade, freedom fighter, smuggler, scoundrel, and lady's man, was a bit of a Robin Hood and renowned to be a stand-up guy of the highest order. His reputation preceded his outrageous appearance. He stuck his thick blue finger in my bowl, grabbed a slice of mango, and popped it into his mouth.

Now, my species, on the whole, was far cleaner and more disease-free than most humanoids, but that didn't stop them from looking at me as an animal. It was a rare one that would share the same food, let alone eat out of the same dish. As Bobby sat there licking his fingers, I took it as a message of complete acceptance. That or he was a cocky motherfucker and nothing bothered him. Probably both.

"Lost two of my crew on that breakout. Sure we killed a whole bunch of Klandar and word will get around, but I'm not sure the loot we were able to grab offsets the price on our heads. We freed a few of our own, so there's that. And then there's you, Clarence. If that is your real name?" He ran his hand over his beard checking for bits of mango.

"Clarence Whitticker." I shoveled more fruit into my mouth.

"Little Johnny seemed to think you were Michael Diamond. It's a real bummer that kid dying. Total fucking waste." Blue sat there sizing me up. "When he saw your name on the manifest he made me promise to look for you. Then he died protecting you. And you turn around and save my ass. He told me about that stunt you pulled on Crestview Station. Did you really stick your neck out for a couple of Zorr kids?"

I swallowed. "Yep."

"And that's when the Klandar got you?"

"Yep."

"And they had you in that hole ever since?"

"Yep."

"You spent five years on a Klandar prison ship for a few puny Zorr slaves? That no one cares about."

"I don't like people that mess with children."

That was for damn sure.

"Shit Clarence. I want you to explain that to me. And in more words than yep." He leaned back and waited.

I finished my food.

"I'm a Palavonte Silverback." I could tell by the look on his face he didn't know what that meant.

"I'm from a Gorilla species indigenous to the Palavonte jungle moon of Grandor 8." He understood Grandor. "When I was young the Empire hadn't granted my people citizenship yet and therefore we were unprotected. As a Zorr, you should know what that means."

Blue Beard nodded.

"Thirty years ago the trade and expansion movements were in full swing and many of the factions needed soldiers. My people were intelligent and physically strong. Our moon was peaceful until Grandor was sucked into interstellar war and left it undefended. They came in the night and destroyed my entire village. Grandor didn't even care until they started getting reports of Palavonte child soldiers tearing their troops apart."

Blue's facial expression was grim. He grew up in the badlands during the war. He understood.

"They took me and my brother when I was five. Murdered the rest of my family. My brother kept me alive for a decade before they killed him for disobeying an order. But by then, I was a brainwashed super soldier. A disturbed adolescent with tremendous energy. A killing machine.

"I was already genius level compared to my captors who thought me a foolish ape. They failed to see our DNA shared a history and that my path yielded the tools for survival on a galactic scale. Out here beyond the Empire, I'm a circus animal, a lower primate, but on Grandor my people are elite members of the intelligentsia."

Bobby leaned in looking me in the eye. "And then there is you."

"Yeah me. 27 years of hit-and-run combat missions, covert ops, sabotage, assassinations, guerrilla warfare, pardon the pun. When I finally escaped I murdered the last three members of my team, snapping my commander's neck with my bare hands.

"I managed a short peaceful time at a monastery in the iron core asteroid belt. A rebel rocket squadron blasted the site from orbit. Both sides wanted the field for ship construction. I hid in the catacombs with the monks for a year. Just reading and reading and reading. They gave me a purpose I didn't know was possible.

"I'm looking for a place to disappear. Somewhere to continue my studies. Working my way toward #71 space to seek asylum. One of the iron core monks was a clone and he opened my eyes to the vast learning potential of my species.

"I can never go back to Grandor. I'm an enemy combatant wanted dead more than alive.

"As for my run-in with the Klandar. I snapped. I took out the whole patrol. I didn't recognize the kid, Johnny, even when he pointed me out in the cell. He was one of a bunch of scared babies on that station. I knew the fate of those little girls and boys. I wanted to give them a fair chance. One I never got."

"Shit." Blue Beard shook his head.

"They cornered me two weeks later on an unregistered freighter heading to the outer systems. I killed five more troopers before they knocked me out. When I woke up, I was mostly amazed they hadn't killed me. After I instigated a riot and attempted escape, they threw me in solitary. The Klandar Authority is all about breaking you."

"But they didn't break you, did they, Clarence?"

"Nope."

Blue grabbed a bottle and a couple glasses off the shelf. Then he poured two drinks. The human expression in my eyes got to him. I'd seen it many times before.

"The system calls me Blue Beard, my crew calls me Captain, and my friends call me Bobby." He grinned and clinked his glass into mine.

"I know somewhere you could hide out..." He leaned in close, eyes glancing from side to side, his beard brushing the hairs on my chest. "Have you ever heard of the lost Planet of the Dead?"